This is the best advice for small, valuable things. An interceptor with a scout (with insta-docks and undocks) is probably as close to invulnerable as you can get. You will be too fast to cargo scan, or even lock for most ships, leaving you only vulnerable to a smartbomb camp which is easily detected and avoided by the scout. The only way you will lose this is if you disconnect (or pass out) and are scanned down by someone who is on the ball before you are removed from space.
For slightly larger things, or even BPOs, a covert, brick-tanked T3C was maybe a better choice before the rebalance, but it still a viable option. The covert cloak allows you to avoid cargo scans, and you can easily fit enough tank still to ignore all reasonably sized smartbomb camps. With this you also have more tolerance to recovering after a inopportune crash or disconnect as it’s not likely a gank squad will be able to get enough firepower to your ship in the minute or two it takes you to log back in.
But since interceptors and T3C are out of the question for the OP as an alpha, as is a scout, I think the best option is probably just a brick-tanked combat cruiser, battlecruiser or battleship for smaller things, and a tanky version of the T1 hauler for larger things. Safety will come from keeping the cargo value low (sub 100M) and always actively piloting the thing. An actively piloted shuttle (or sub 2-second agility fit Atron) is also impossible to lock or scan with proper dock/undock bookmarks, so if you feel brave, you could use one of those, warping to 100 to scout the gate for possible smartbombing ships, and then bouncing somewhere and then back to the gate to jump.
Not said yet : don’t warp strait from gate to gate if you fear bubble or smartbomb, warp to a planet out of the alignement so you won’t arrive where they expect you. This trick can also allow to avoid draging bubbles.
A shield tanked, cargo expanded Gnosis with neuts in the high slots is hard to kill, holds a lot, and the neuts give a lot of countermeasure against ganks as most gank ships require cap to fire.
You beat me to it. I used to do a LOT of hauling in a specifically fit Gnosis. 2.91 s align, 3.8 AU warp, 65 k EHP, and 1865 m3 cargo. Plus guns and drones to fight back if somebody decided to try to take me on. A relatively cheap fit as well, so definitely a good and viable option.
I lost a Tayra recently in a 0.5 system. I survived the first round of vollies, but they had 17 seconds to reload and try again. I would have survived in a 0.6 system.
You would have died in 0.6 system as well. These kinds of ganks tend to be done in systems with concord prespawned. From EVE Uni wiki - “When CONCORD has already spawned elsewhere in the system but isn’t on grid, the response time is significantly increased. In this case it will take about 22 seconds them to arrive and start firing in a 0.6 system.”
Funny, because I vastly prefer flying a Badger/Tayra to, say, a Charon. 1/10 the align time, 3x the warp speed. Ability to fit afterburner/microwarpdrive, tanking, even active defenses in the high slots. Even better, Badgers are laughably cheap: it’s a 500,000 ISK hull versus 1.4 billion. Much better risk/reward, IMO, and much more efficient use of hauling time. I can haul stuff around three regions fairly quickly, and I fly my Badger into lowsec all the time; I would never consider flying a Charon in there without escort.
Yes, if you pack a Badger full of low-volume, high-value stuff, you get into ganking territory. But most gankers specialize in more expensive targets and ignore smaller ships. And with a 6-second align time, they don’t have much time to react even if they notice you.
I keep looking into buying something like a Charon because there are high-bulk hauling opportunities I can’t currently take advantage off – like, hauling 100 Barren Command Centers. But the math never seems to work out. Spend 1.5 billion for a slow, defenseless ship in order to take high-bulk cargoes that might yield 20 million ISK per tediously-slow trip. It would take 75 trips to break even. Meanwhile, my Badger is actually fun to fly, can handle most cargoes, and pays for itself several times over with a single trip.
Alternatively you can fit a 500mn Micro Warp Drive on an Orca, pulse it once while initiating warp and then wait just 10 seconds to get into warp as the max speed of the Orca drops back to below the warp threshold at the end of the Micro Warp Drive’s cycle. Typically an Orca takes about close to 30 seconds to enter warp but the 500mn cuts that down to about 1/3.
